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I spent some time working on a long over-due need in our home…a key holder. Things like keys get lost too easily in our home, so we needed somewhere to keep them handy. I didn’t want to buy anything for this project, so I culled my collection of craft and project “stuff” and came up with this. I had some leftover wood from a bedroom project (that I will be posting about soon! The final product) and parts to an IKEA curtain system that I had never used. In the picture below are the tools needed for this simple project.

I started by painting the wood white, letting it dry for a few hours, then taping off the pattern I wanted. This was the toughest part of the project since I am not a measure and tape kind of person with little projects.

Once all of the paint was dry, I screwed in the eye hooks, measured out the picture wire for how long I needed and attached that to the eye hooks. I strung the key hooks in before I attached both sides.

The last step was to determine where I wanted to hang it and get it on the wall. The front door above the light switch was where we needed it.

Once hung, I went over the nails with the acrylic paint to hide the nail heads. And.. hang the keys!! Super simple and useful project.

Anyone else get a little project knocked out over the holidays? How about a big project? I would love to hear what you have been up to!

It’s time for YHL and Bower Power’s regularly programmed Pinterest Challenge!! You know you have been pinning, you know you have a dozen projects you want to do. Well quit looking and talking and DO IT! I have a bunch of pins that are just no-brainers for getting done. I am pretty sure I have my project picked out, too. So go check out your boards and pick a project, then come back here next Wednesday, the 14th, and share what you did! Link up in the comments! Those crazy girls over there teamed up with Erin from The Great Indoors and Cassie from Hi Sugarplum! for this challenge. And if you aren’t familiar with Sherry at YHL and Katie at Bower Power you need to remedy that situation right now.

I think I will do one of these… you will have to wait till next week to find out which!

I am very excited…my sister-in-law is moving into her very first apartment (not as a college student!) and she is allowing me to help her with making her new place “hers”. (Can you see me jumping up and down I am so excited???) I have had so much fun in the last 4 months or so blogging and tailoring my home decor radar. I love to decorate, and it’s even more fun since her style is a little different from my own. I mean, I see things all the time that I like, and would love to have in my home, but they just don’t jive with my current style. So now I get to step out of that mold and have some fun! And did I mention she has great taste?? (She was key in my fabric choice for that ottoman – picture me standing in the isle with my face all contorted from the effort of trying to make that decision – lol, she gave me the nudge to get it!)

The apartment complex is going to paint an accent wall for her before she moves in (pretty awesome, right?) and she chose…. turquoise!!! Wow, bravery!! And I love it! I am currently putting together a mood board for her bedroom. It’s challenging, and I never realized all the questions I would have for her… and I really need to see the space. She moves in this weekend, so I will be able to check it out and hopefully get some before pics.

She picked up some items for the apartment already, and has been pinning things that suit her style. I think some inspiration “shopping” might be in order…after all, she is on a budget (aren’t we all these days, ugh) and I don’t want to deck her mood board out with items that our out of reach. She did splurge on some really nice Ralph Lauren lamps at Marshall’s…. check ’em out!

Nice?? Oh yes. Funny, you can tell a little bit about a person’s style just from a lamp choice.. 🙂

I am very honored that she values my opinion and wants my help with this …. so stay tuned to see what we come up with.

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Well… it took some time, and trial and error, but I did it. I made a storage ottoman form a standard, non-storage ottoman! If you recall, I scored this ottoman from Goodwill a couple of weeks ago.

Well,here it is!! All decked out in new duds.

It was in decent condition, just outdated and lots of wasted space inside. My vision was to make this a storage ottoman that could be used to store all sorts of goodies. This is all in line with our need for more storage in our home. I am determined to add storage, but only if it is attractive. So my plan of action was to pull all of that fabric off and see what I had underneath.

After I cleaned off all of the fabric this is what I was left with. This is actually flipped upside down. I was hoping there would be a top and bottom piece of wood, but there was only a top piece. So much for using only what as existing… I would have to figure out how to create a top and bottom. My sister-in-law had a good idea, pop off that piece that was already on the top, and use it as the top since it was the perfect size, then use a piece of plywood I had in the shed to create a bottom in it.

Did I mention this thing had a lot of staples? I mean a LOT of staples, it was ridiculous. Whoever had built this thing was not intending for it to be taken part.

The next steps were pretty simple. I measured the outside of the ottoman and cut my material about 2 inches longer. The I laid the fabric on one side and began stapling it by stretching it over the top and then the bottom. I did the entire top of one side, then pulled it tight across the bottom. If you notice, I have tabs cut out around those supports inside. I simply cut those pieces back when I had it all stapled on.

Here is where I ran into a bit of a problem…. when I got to the very end of the fabric, I had to attach it to the ottoman. I folded it over and staples it. I did not like how this looked at all. I hopped online and did some searching for ideas of how to remedy this. I found this tutorial over at Running with Scissors

I pulled MORE staples out… lol ugh! This was actually an easy step, turn the fabric face to face and sew a quick seam in it. Turn it right side out and pull it down over the ottoman.

Now you may have noticed that the inside of this ottoman is particle board. I will have to be careful what I put inside this unless I line it somehow. I had purchased a flat white sheet from the Goodwill a while back and was holding onto it in case I needed it. That would work perfect for this ottoman. So I put together a quick plan after measuring out the ottoman.

Thanks to my mom for helping me get all these pieces cut. I am sooo new at this and she keeps me straight on cutting fabric correctly. I lined up all the pieces before I started sewing them together, just to be sure I wasn’t horribly off on any of my cuts.

I sewed all of them together in a circle, then sewed them onto a bottom piece of the sheet. (Should I mention that I sewed the bottom on the wrong side the first time?? lol thank goodness for seam rippers).

Here it is! I stapled my lining on at first, but I didn’t like how that turned out either, so I went back and hot glued it in. I am actually quite pleased that this worked out so well, I came up with the liner all on my own, and I am NOT experienced in this sort of thing.

The next item to take care of is the lid. Again, this part was straight forward. Cut the fabric with some extra on the edge to pull over and staple. Once it was all stapled, I hot glued a piece of that sheet that I had hemmed up as a liner to cover the particle board.

Here we are… getting close to the end!! I purchased a piano hinge to attach the top. I was concerned that it would not handle the job, but had seen lots of other ottomans using this simple hinge. I also purchased a soft close hinge to keep this lid from slamming down on anyone’s fingers. Specifically a 17 month old that would find it endlessly fascinating to hide stuff in there.

And here you go… here is the inside all put together and ready to go! um, well, almost, the soft close hinge I bought was a right side hinge. Because of the side supports I will need a hinge that can be attached either farther out, or closer to the center of the lid.

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Good morning all! Hope you have found your way over here on a pretty, wonderful, fun-filled, productive morning… because I am about to take the productive out of that sentence for ya 😉 Starting this month, February, I am going to feature a new blog weekly for you to check out. As I mentioned in my Blogger love post, there are so many great blogs out there. I doubt I have the time in one day to read and get to know even half of them. Hopefully you will go and check them out, I am sure that at least one will strike your fancy.

This week I am going to introduce you to a blog that I frequent often. Have you ever been over to iloverehabs ? If not you just don’t know what you are missing! Jennifer, her husband (coined “the hubs”) and piper (the dog), share the journey they are taking through rehabbing old items, decorating their own house, as well as helping friends with their decorating needs. Just check out her home tour if you don’t believe me. Here are a few shots:

Pretty nice, huh? Go check out the rest of her projects…definitely “pin” worthy stuff. Blogs like this are what keep me going. So glad she has taken the time to share her story and passion with the rest of the world!

And I thought you might be interested in what I have been working on… here is a little teaser…

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Have you seen them? I know you have…you have to have seen them. You know, the mustaches everywhere! They are the coolest accessory these days. What would 2012 be without staches?? I need to jump on that bandwagon before the wheels fall off. I ended up getting some real cute staches for your nails off of Groopdealz last month…can’t wait for summer to use them! But enough about shopping, I thought I would try my hand at making a mustache glass. The point is that when you lift the cup to drink from it, it appears you have a funky little mustache. At first, I was going to etch them on. I had seen some good posts on etching and this would be a good way for me to get in on all of that fun. Then I started to price etching cream. WOW! That stuff is expensive…$23 bucks for 22oz. That’s about a buck an ounce. That means I would have zero room for error with this stuff. And then I went on to read that it actually changes the composition of the glass, so once this stuff is on – it’s on for the long haul. That last part made me pretty nervous. Luckily, while searching for spray paint for another project, I came across some frosting spray. It was $5.98 a can…and let me tell you, I can stretch a can of spray paint.

I put my supplies together:

drinking glass of choice
one can of frosting spray
several mustache templates that I found free over herean exacto knife
some removable contact paper (found at Wal-mart for less than 5 bucks a roll)

I cut out one of the mustaches and then traced it onto the contact paper. I used the exacto knife to carefully cut out the mustache, leaving a stencil of sorts. I slowly placed this on the glass, being careful to align the mustache where I wanted it as well as keeping it level. I took another piece of contact paper to cover the rest of the glass. I flipped the glass over on some newspaper and spray away. Actually it is important to pay attention to how you spray….use a well ventilated area, keep the can at least 8-10 inches from the object you are spraying and work the can back and forth pausing spraying once past the item.. does that make sense?

And voila! You have a cute little stache!

Here is the second template I used. This is the mustache cut out of the contact paper.

And here are both complete. I was actually pretty happy with how they turned out. The only problem? When you went to drink out of them the stache was in between your eyes… kinda like a funky uni-brow, not a handle-bar mustache. Oops! And they were a little on the small side.

I attempted to correct the problem by at least making it bigger. I just printed out a template larger and tried to line it up over the original one.
Fail! I had the worst time with the paint coming off with the contact paper, and you could sorta see the original stache. Bummer.

So, I scraped it all off and started over. It came off really easy, and that actually concerned me because if these glasses were going to get any use, I wouldn’t want them to show wear and tear to quickly. I figured after this try, if they still scraped off easy after a coat of clear acrylic, then it would be a job for etching cream.

Here they are… all ready for a coat of frosting spray.

And after they were sprayed. I actually discovered something interesting…you cannot spray a clear acrylic over this frosting spray. It cancels out the frost or something and just makes it clear. Odd.

And here they are all done! Look good?…uummm…

Maybe you should look closer…. agh! Fingerprints!!! Sigh, oh well… I guess that even though I was being careful not to handle them too much, without gloves it was unavoidable.

This is a project I would chalk up to learning experience. I need to keep an eye out for coupons and get a jar of etching cream and quit being a chicken and so dang cheap. Oh well, I can at least scrape all of it off and start over again. You win some…you start over on some… I can’t say lose, cause I can still recoup this one a bit. I still love the idea, and although I would rather share all of my “wins” I figure, let’s keep it real..I don’t get them all right.

Anyone else have any project fails to share? Oh, come on…I can’t be the only one! Maybe a fun mustache story to tell??

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Anyone like to shop Goodwill? I know my mother-in-law should probably buy stock – er, if it was a publicly traded company of course 😉 I have gotten back into my thrifting. I used to do it a lot, but kinda fell out of the practice. It must have been something about having a baby that got my DIY bone to itching, cause it seems that’s all I want to do these days. I have come across some pretty neat things at Goodwill, and I think that I need to start exploring the other locations to see what goodies they may hold. Upon my last trip to the Goodwill, I found 3 things. Please ignore the Scentsy warmer- that’s its home on the bar.

I took this shot first, but as you can see..I had a “helper” who was very intent on helping. And those are fairly heavy glass, so I didn’t want any squished toes.

I found 2 of these “greenhouses” and a pasta container.

Some back story here would be relevant ~
I had actually been oggling this little “greenhouse” that YHL has for sometime

Then I saw some for sale over at Zgallerie (my favorite place to peruse these days) and honestly, I had no idea what they were called (I searched that site for quite some time, but to no avail). I shot an email over to YHL to see if they had a name for it. Sure enough, they called it a greenhouse, or a cloche. Yay! A name to google (thanks so much to Sherry!)! Here is what I found when I googled “cloche” images:

Must be a hat thing.. and you know, my son would go crazy if he saw this. He loves him some hats.

So then I googled “glass cloche”. Ahhhh that is what I was looking for.

And.. I had already decided on a great place for one of these to reside. Oh and bonus? I had picked up these cute little faux succulents at Target for 2.50. So total cost on that little deal is 5.45+tax Woot! *note: I am not sure why my pics are all wonky…working on that!

I havent decided what I am going to do with the other one just yet. It’s waiting in the wings for some brilliant idea of some sort. And that pasta container? It is just another purchase in my mission of organizing the pantry. I will tell you that it’s in the works, but it may seriously take a year to complete. I am not a spender and it will take time to accumulate the containers I need to complete it. I could give myself a big old smack to the forehead though, I visited World Market this last weekend for the first time, and they had some super cute larger glass cannister at a very good price. I walked away… ugh. I wish I wasn’t such a penny pincher sometimes.

So has anyone else found some great Goodwill items recently? Or maybe you have some organizing going on behind the scenes? Please share!

**Teaser alert! I just purchased material for our curtains in the living room… I love it! I will be cutting panels and sorting out how I will hang them this weekend hopefully. I will share the deets when I am done! Think – peacock.

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It’s 2012, and I am in full decorate mode. I want to do it ALL – NOW!!! I want to paint the island, paint the kids’ bathroom and vanity, put in some kind of storage in the living room, create a new dining set. I could list all.day.long the ideas I have and what I want to do. But the fact of the matter is…it all takes time, and money. Both of which are running closer to “E” in my daily gas tank. So I have decided the only way that I am going to accomplish anything is to take bite size pieces. I will make a list for each room of what I want to do. Then I can figure out which items will give me the most impact for the least money to start. That should at least quell the raging decor beast inside for a while.

How to begin? I seriously have notebooks full of ideas just scribbled down as I think of them. I attempted to put them in room or project order, but that didn’t always work out. Oh and did I mention that I got a sewing machine for Christmas?? (thanks to my wonderful family!) So now I have even more projects that I need to do! Need.. not want, need. Because I need a home that is beautiful to look at, I need a home that makes me smile when I see it. So let’s start with those areas I see the most: living room, kitchen, dining room.

I believe that little list of big stuff handles it. I have ideas, and I have some things in the works. Sadly, any furniture work will have to wait for warmer weather since I have nowhere to paint this time of year. But there are lots more changes I can make!

In the meantime, I thought I would share some sites that keep me inspired and reaching for my pocketbook. There are lots of good deals on a variety of home decor and general items! Check them out!

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Hello there! I am so glad that you stopped by. I am a full-time working mom, aw ife ,a DIYer, and a cook. This is the dumping ground for all of my work! Hope you enjoy reading as much as I enjoyed doing!

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